Lou Salomé and I he Quest for Intimacy 271was himself sometimes full of vengeance toward the common man of
ressentiment, wishing to make room for his Übermensch in Zarathustra by
attacking the "far too many." He felt surrounded by those "last people"
who have their "litde pleasures" for the day and the night and who
"blinkingly" contrive the joy of work. To such people, the lofty and sub-
lime are just plain boring: "What is love? What is creation? What is long-
ing? What is a star? Thus asks the last man and blinks" (4,19; ZFirst Part,
Prologue § 5). This is a burden that prevents man from soaring upward.
Nietzsche responded with fantasies of annihilation. He, the Übermensch,
with whom they will all come face to face. Woe unto them ...
Nietzsche's image of the Übermensch betrays his own ambivalence while
unfolding an entire existential drama. The Üben/msch represents a higher
biological type and could be the product of deliberate breeding. However,
he can also function as an ideal for anyone who wishes to gain power
over himself and cultivate his "virtues," anyone who is creative and
knows the whole spectrum of the human capacity for thought, fantasy,
and imagination. Nietzsche's Übermensch is the consummate realization
of human potential and, in this sense, is also a response to the "death of
God."
Let us recall the famous scene in The Gay Science in which the "mad-
man" runs about in the bright morning hours yelling "I am seeking
God! I am seeking God!... We killed him!... Is the magnitude of this
deed not too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods just to
seem worthy of it?" (3,481; GS § 125). The murderer of God must him-
self become God—that is, an Übermensch—otherwise he will sink into
banality, as Nietzsche attempted to illustrate in this scene. The issue is
whether man can retain the ingenuity he employed in inventing an
entire heaven of gods, or whether he will be left empty after attacking
them. If God is dead because people have realized that they invented
him, it is crucial that their powers to posit divinity remain intact. The
Übermensch embodies the sanctification of this world as a response to